Fast Science Victory: Civ VII Edition

[Manpanzee]

Thanks for all the great tricks and guides in this thread. How many settlements do you normally convert to cities in antiquity, exploration and modern after patch 1.3.0 when going for a speed science victory?

Both Antiquity and Modern tend to be exactly three cities.

Exploration is in theory "as many as you can get". In practice, I usually end up in the 4-6 range, and I've gotten 40-turn Exploration with both the low and high end of that. The highest priorities for spending gold in Exploration are Settlers and warehouses, and that doesn't always leave much left over for developing cities.

 

[Bleidraner]

For me, 3 in Antiquity, as many as I can in Exploration, in real life 4-5 in GoTMs and 6 when I play reloading in this thread, in Modern I have been experimenting with just 2, to take advantage 15% bump in yields in towns.

Having said that, I have not come even close to a 40 turns Exploration.

 

[pmarc]

Since 1.2.5 I find the 3rd city usually comes quite late in Antiquity, and I've been wondering whether it is worth it for the extra golden age academy (plus the UQ if it's good, mostly Maya).

For example in a recent Maya game where Antiquity ended soon after turn 100 (one civ wipe, only 4 wonders but 1 future tech to make up for it), my culture path was Myst I - Myst II to build the Great Stele, then the Maya civics. I didn't buy much (hurrying the first warehouse in capital, and maybe 1 slinger after), but by the time I could afford a 2nd city it was around the time I got the Stele gold, also around the time I got Bronze Working, so 2 cities is good then to get a barracks and units out for the war. Before war I have 2 cities, 3 towns, and just enough useful resources to fill the two cities so they work on wonders/buildings. At that point not only the 3rd city would increase building cost, but it would dilute the production resources. As a result I bought a library and some warehouses there earlier, but then waited until around turn 80 just to get the unique quarter and academy in that 3rd city.

 

[Salamis]

A new one to share:
Ashoka (WR) leading Egypt > Abbasids > Russia
91+40+26=157
Large Continents and Islands map
Mementos: Science + Culture attribute; Exp - Sci + Culture attributes; Mod - Note G + 10% Sci towards masteries

The idea was to expand early and finish Ant with more Settlements (and more developed Settlements) than I usually would; continue the expansion at the start of Exploration and then pivot to building UQ's and Universities in as many cities as possible. This was going more or less as intended but a bug hit when transitioning to Modern > the game didn't recognise that I'd fully completed the Science legacy path and only gave me 2/3 Science legacy points. It meant I couldn't slot both Lyceums and GA Universities so I chose the former. Quite frustrating as I had 9 Universities to carry over. I tried replaying the last few turns of Explo but no joy. If I'd known that in advance, I would have continued to build settlers rather than Universities, oh well!

Ant: Great fun with Egypt and being able to build anything and everything. One civ wipe, researched one future civic and completed all the paths to end the age. Finished with 4 cities each with an Academy and UQ.

Exp: Two civ wipes and researched one future tech. Completed all the legacy paths even if the game didn't think so! Finished with 9 cities: 6 had hard built the UQ and University and the other 3 were converted on the last turn and purchased the UQ and University.

Modern: Researched Rocketry on t23 but still hadn't completed the 2nd project. Harvested a Science IP to bulb a Mastery same turn which completed the 2nd project then started on the final two. Completed Oxford Uni in another city on t24 which gave two Science Masteries plus one more researched, harvested the only Military IP on the map and harvested a Culture IP to bulb a Civic Mastery. This completed the penultimate project but even with another Science and Civic Mastery it took two more tuns to complete the final project.

Given Ashoka's happiness advantage, I didn't lean into expansion enough even though that was the idea. Ignoring the bug, producing a few more Settlers instead of a University or two might yield more Science long-term.

 

[pmarc]

@Salamis I'm always impressed by the kinds of yields you are ending up with in Antiquity. How many settlements did you found and conquer in Antiquity here?

 

[Salamis]

@Salamis I'm always impressed by the kinds of yields you are ending up with in Antiquity. How many settlements did you found and conquer in Antiquity here?

Conquered 3 and founded 7 (exc. cap) so finished with 11. It might not necessarily be how many but how early they were founded. In more detail:
- Conquered Trung Trac's (Khmer) cap on t55 which took me to 6/5 on the settlement limit. At this point I had my cap, 1 city (converted on about t46-48) and 3 Towns all of which were at least at pop 7. I made peace with TT as her army was still quite numerous but engaged elsewhere, used the 10 turns of peace to upgrade my units and then took her remaining settlement in the t70's (by which point I'd founded another Town so 8/6). I was fortunate that she'd warred and not expanded at all well. In most games I'd struggle to be ready for conquering by t50 but Egypt's production bonus is amazing.
- Took Edward Teach's (Carthage) cap in the late t80's. Fortunate slightly in that he built a polar navy rather than a tundra army but by that point the land units you can bring would have been strong enough anyway.

Regarding yields in Ant, I aim to research a future civic or tech by t95-100. It's not reliably possible and generally requires leaning hard into either culture or science; I think leaning into culture gives greater advantages (policies and wonders).
I love @ValleTomate 's Ashoka happiness approach and it's useful here because in mid-age Antiquity, you can ignore the pathways that lead to +1 settlement and go down the central pathway that gives significant culture bonus policies. This in-turn speeds-up progression through the civic tree. The happiness bonus is also strong enough that from mid-age you won't be far off having back-to-back golden ages and so a +20% culture rate. Couple that with a civ that provides raw culture and you're flying!

 

[civfanatic4sure]

@Salamis awesome game! Can you share the maps from antiquity and exploration?

The move to leverage Ashoka and ignore the settlement limit tentacles of the culture tree to pop a future civic is great advice — looking forward to trying that.

RE maps — I am always curious to see the layout because what I struggle with the most is the 40 turn exploration — at some point in mid antiquity I’m always guessing which coast to prioritize for prebuilt settlers and the randomness of TR’s in explo can be brutal, eg sometimes the coast without the other continent spawns a little island in tundra with a ton of silver + fur and the coast with the other continent is a one ruby dud — would appreciate anyone consistently knocking out 40 turn explorations to share wisdom!

 

[Manpanzee]

RE maps — I am always curious to see the layout because what I struggle with the most is the 40 turn exploration — at some point in mid antiquity I’m always guessing which coast to prioritize for prebuilt settlers and the randomness of TR’s in explo can be brutal, eg sometimes the coast without the other continent spawns a little island in tundra with a ton of silver + fur and the coast with the other continent is a one ruby dud — would appreciate anyone consistently knocking out 40 turn explorations to share wisdom!

I always run Survey for the majority of Antiquity, and I make sure to hit the "search" button up and down the coast anywhere I'm plausibly close enough to cross. Since Distant Lands get hut spawns, the effective scouting radius is a bit larger than what you can actually see. If my Scout spots a hut five tiles away in the Distant Lands, I know there'll be a reasonable crossing point even if I can't actually see the shallow water yet.

 

[Salamis]

@Salamis awesome game! Can you share the maps from antiquity and exploration?

The move to leverage Ashoka and ignore the settlement limit tentacles of the culture tree to pop a future civic is great advice — looking forward to trying that.

RE maps — I am always curious to see the layout because what I struggle with the most is the 40 turn exploration — at some point in mid antiquity I’m always guessing which coast to prioritize for prebuilt settlers and the randomness of TR’s in explo can be brutal, eg sometimes the coast without the other continent spawns a little island in tundra with a ton of silver + fur and the coast with the other continent is a one ruby dud — would appreciate anyone consistently knocking out 40 turn explorations to share wisdom!

Due to the bug I cleared the save files except for the starting location (attached) and t40 exploration which I reported (screenshot below).

Luck definitely plays a part and this is a good map for treasure resources as it has multiple locations with 2-3 resources close to the homelands.
I chose a large map rather than huge because I find that the distance/number of turns needed to get a treasure fleet back to the homelands on a huge map can be too much (a couple of religious beliefs add movement but I prefer not to rely on that). I always assume that three rounds of treasure fleet spawns will be needed to get 30 points by t40. Say you settle distant land towns on t10 the 3rd round will spawn on t34 so a max of 6 turns to get back for t40. So ideally you want 3+ settlers carried over from Antiquity on the coast and ready to cross. Purchase another 1 or 2 in coastal settlements on t1. Have some go East and some go West.
I do the same as @Manpanzee and scout the coastline. When I’ve completed a civic I slot Survey, Search with the Scouts, and then slot it out so I can run another policy.

If anyone wants to play the map but slot different mementos, these are the details:
Large Continents and Islands
Map seed -624700937
Game seed -624700999

 

[Bleidraner]

I have a new one to report, not amazing but hopefully will bring a smile to your faces.

Isabella leading Tonga/Abbasids Ant: 98 Expl 48. The reason I want to report it is this screenshot with every tile in the map completely explored.

Spoiler Tonga t98 :

I call this "Satellites on t98 Antiquity" . If you look at the bottom left minimap, you will see that the whole map is explored, every tile. I discovered by chance that if a growth event pushes your Tehina to the land, it will remain there. From there it was just a matter of ensuring that the Tehina was not killed and that it did not embark again.

Just another example of how powerful Tonga's ability is. Being able to see the whole map allowed me to plan exploration carefully and finally have a shot at the 40 turns. I managed to finish all 4 paths by t38, but could not end the age until I had wiped the second civ at t48. Knowing exactly where my settlers needed to go helped a lot and also I knew the location of every hut in the map from t1 of exploration. As you can see in the map I had to wipe 2 civs with 5 and 4 settlements each in less than 40 turns, with the danger that they would settle additional towns (and they did), and I knew it would be almost impossible, you have to set up an easy civ wipe in Antiquity to be able to do it in 40 turns.

Anyway, I think I will not play Modern, the patch came yesterday, and I think I am done with non science leaders for now. I also need to get to the GoTM and then I will go back to this thread and try something else. I was hoping to try Egypt, but it has been nerfed:-(